No Crisis

I refuse to believe that Trump’s election is a moment of ‘crisis’ for liberalism.

We’ve always been under siege. We’ve always been fighting uphill.

We were fighting uphill when we were abolitionists. We were fighting uphill when we worked to win the right to vote for the women of this country.

We were even fighting uphill when we wanted to stand with Britain in World War II. Not many people know this, but many in this country wanted to stay out, to let the Nazis and the Soviets divide up Europe between them, and let Japan have Asia. It took liberals like FDR to stand up and say, “That’s not the world we want to live in.”

Every time, we have been in the right. It has just taken a while for the rest of the country to see it.

I am reminded of MLK’s phrase, “the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” I remember the victories of the recent past, when we expanded the right to marry to same-sex couples. When we finally decriminalized a drug less harmful than alcohol. When we made health insurance affordable for 20 million more Americans.

This is not a crisis for liberalism. It isn’t the last gasp of conservatism, either, a desperate attempt by the powerful to stave off change.